Publication Date:
2014-09-28
Description:
At present, global CO2 emission inventories are mainly based on bottom-up estimates that rely, for example, on reported fossil fuel consumptions and fuel types1,2. The associated uncertainties propagate into the CO2-to-NOx emission ratios that are used in pollution prediction and monitoring3, as well as into biospheric carbon fluxes derived by inverse models4. Here we analyse simultaneous and co-located satellite retrievals from SCIAMACHY (ref. 5; SCanning Imaging Absorption SpectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY) of the column-average dry-air mole fraction of CO2 (refs 6,7) and NO2 (refs 8-10) for the years 2003-2011 to provide a top-down estimate of trends in emissions and in the ratio between CO2 and NOx emissions. Our analysis shows that the CO2-to-NOcx emission ratio has increased by 4.2 ± 1.7%yr-1 in East Asia. In this region, we find a large positive trend of CO2 emissions (9.8 ± 1.7%yr-1), which we largely attribute to the growing Chinese economy. This trend exceeds the positive trend of NOx emissions (5.8±0.9%yr-1). Our findings suggest that the recently installed and renewed technology in East Asia, such as power plants, transportation and so on, is cleaner in terms of NOx emissions than the old infrastructure, and roughly matches relative emission levels in North America and Europe. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.
Print ISSN:
1752-0894
Electronic ISSN:
1752-0908
Topics:
Geosciences
